Timeless advice for troubled times ● Part 6 | "The Whole Truth"

Ever lie to yourself to feel good about yourself? The truth is, lying to ourselves only keeps us from doing what’s good for us.

NOTE: The following content is a raw transcript and has not been edited for grammar, punctuation, or word usage.

Today, we're wrapping up our series. You'll be glad you did Timeless Advice for Troubled Times. If you've been with us throughout this series, this is an advice series. It's based on the premise that we've all lived long enough to have developed some good habits and some bad habits. So we've made some good decisions, some bad decisions. We've experienced the benefit of good habits and good decisions. We've all experienced the consequences of bad decisions and bad habits. All of us have stories that end with, "I'm so glad I did." Unfortunately, we all have stories that end with, "Wow, I wish I had." We have stories that end with, "I'm glad I didn't." And we [chuckle] have stories that end with, "I wish I hadn't."

So this series is unoriginal. You'll be glad you did. Advice. It's just advice. These are not moral absolutes, these aren't imperatives, these aren't rules, okay? And the advice that we've been talking about throughout this series sits between the rules, but it ensures... It pretty much ensures that if you will take this advice, you won't break the rules that have the potential to break your heart, to break your life, to break your relationships, to cause you, as we talked about last time, to go broke. And again, this advice, like the advice that you give, because we all give advice when people want advice, it sits between the rules. It sits in the realm of wisdom. Not moral absolutes, but wisdom. And we've defined wisdom in this series as simply "insights informed by the knowledge that life is connected." "Life is connected" means that today impacts tomorrow; that yesterday impacted today; that one thing leads to another; that we don't make decisions in isolation; that every single decision we make in some way shows up in the future, that life is connected. And wisdom, wisdom surfaces when we begin asking questions with the knowledge that life is connected.

So if you've not been with us, here's the advice we've given so far. Number one, listen. Then we talked about forgive, defer, live generous. And my unoriginal, you'll be glad you did advice for today, as we wrap up the series is this, "Tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself the truth." Specifically, tell yourself the truth about you.

Tell yourself the truth about why you do what you do. Tell yourself the truth about why you don't do what you ought to do. And the thing is this, and I'm gonna give you an out, even if you don't act on what you discover, and even if you don't act on what you admit to yourself, even if this does not impact your behaviors at all, come on, at least tell yourself the truth.

Now, here's why this is such a big deal. When you lie to another person, it damages the relationship. Even if the other person doesn't know you lied to them, it damages the relationship because you know, and there's just something between you and them, and they oftentimes can sense it, even though they don't know what it is. When you lie to another person, you damage the relationship. You're basically at odds with them. When you lie to yourself, when you lie to yourself, you are at odds with you. As weird as this sounds, you actually damage your relationship with yourself and you are no longer yourself. And eventually, in most cases, it's gonna put you... When you lie to yourself, it's gonna put you at odds with other people because other people recognize when you're lying to yourself. We call lying to ourself... When somebody else is lying to themselves, we just call that an excuse.

So when you in any area of life refuse to tell yourself the truth, it not only puts you at odds with you, you're not only not your real self, as we're gonna see, but it eventually puts you at odds with other people because other people see through your lame excuses and through my lame excuses when we come up with excuses for why we won't do what we need to do, or why we are doing things we need to stop doing. They see it, right?

So I'll make you a promise. It's kind of a big promise, and I don't know your circumstances but I'm confident that this is true. When you decide... And this is a decision... When you decide to become ruthlessly honest with yourself, when you decide, at whatever point you decide to be ruthlessly honest with yourself and let go of the pretend you, in a very short amount of time after you decide to become ruthlessly honest with yourself and let go of the pretend you, you will look back and you will wonder, "Who was that person? I don't even recognize that person."

You will become such a different person that you will be embarrassed of the person you used to be, which for some of you, is the person you are right now, because you won't be honest with yourself. And the people who love you most, and the people who know you best, they already know. When we lie to ourselves, we hide from ourselves. And you know what? It's exhausting, it's unhealthy, it diminishes our capability, it diminishes our potential, it gets in the way and it impacts our relationships, as I said, with the people closest to us. So here's the bottom line, okay? Look up here. Stop! Stop doing that!

Let's pray. Father... No, I mean, right, just stop doing it. I don't have to convince you. You're adults. Nobody's taking notes. It's like, "Duh, this is kind of common sense. I shouldn't lie to myself. When I lie to other people, it hurts the relationship. I lie myself, it hurts the relationship with myself. I need to stop doing this," but this is really hard not to do. In fact, we are all natural born liars. Every single one of us, right? You got kids, right?

"Son, I need to have a conversation with you. We need to go over a few things, four things, in particular. Today for the next few minutes, I wanna teach you how... And you're gonna have to pay attention... I'm gonna teach you how to lie, deceive, excuse and blame, okay? So I need you to listen carefully because these are important life skills, right? Now I'm gonna teach you how to lie, deceive, excuse and blame, and then next week, your mom's gonna come back and she's gonna teach you how to combine these things, because when you master combining these things... I mean, this is a life... Shh, listen, this is important. You gotta learn this stuff," said no parent anywhere, including yours or mine. Because this is... We come into the world, we're already prone to this and we're already good at this.

Now, this is not an excuse to lie to other people, so take this in context. Lying to someone else, at least it kind of makes sense, right? But why in the world would we lie to ourselves? You lie to you and I lie to me for the very same reasons that we lie to other people. We lie to avoid. We lie to avoid admitting our need to change, because if I can convince myself I don't really need to change, then I don't have to change. So I'm just gonna tell myself a lie about myself, so I don't have to change anything. We lie to avoid. And we lie to protect.

We lie to protect ourselves, this is hard, okay, we lie to protect ourselves from embarrassing truth about ourselves. We lie to ourselves to protect ourselves from shameful things from the past, or shameful things that are going on right now. Or we lie to protect ourselves from the reality of what a stupid decision we just made financially, relationally, academically, whatever it might be, truth that actually makes us feel more like a loser than a winner. Bottom line, we lie to ourselves to feel better about ourselves. And you know who could blame us? We all wanna feel good about ourselves. If you're a parent, you want your kids to feel good about themselves. And it's good to feel good about you. But it's not good to lie in order to get there, because, this is important, lying, don't forget this, lying to ourselves, to feel good about ourselves keeps us from doing what's good for ourselves.

Lying to feel good about ourselves keeps us from doing the good that is good for ourselves. Self- deception, 100% of the time, self-deception empowers us to avoid change. It empowers us to avoid the change that makes us a better version of ourselves. In fact, to get super analytical, I came up with this just trying to... Again, it's gotta be simple for me or I can't carry it forward, that really, lying to ourselves is actually... It's actually self-rejection masquerading as self-protection. In other words, I'm trying to protect myself by not telling myself the truth. But as long as I'm not telling myself the truth about why I did, why I didn't, why I won't, why I want to, why I'm always, why I never... As long as I'm telling myself a lie, I'm actually rejecting myself. Because when you lie to another person, you're rejecting them. You're saying, "You are not honorable enough to deserve the truth from me. You can't either handle the truth. Or I don't trust you with the truth. Or I don't know what you'll do with the truth." So lying is always rejection. So when we lie to ourselves, when we deceive ourselves about anything, it's really self-rejection masquerading as, "No, no, no. I'm just trying to protect myself."

I lie to protect myself, which puts me at odds with myself and others. And granted, sometimes... I get this... Okay... I'm human. Sometimes it's just easier to lie than to try. I get that. So we say things like, "Well, I don't really care what they think." Yes, you do. In fact, a little heads up. A little side bar. You never say, I don't care what they think unless you care what they think... Look, other wise, you wouldn't even be thinking about them. Okay? The reason that you're so adamant, "I don't care what they think," is you're thinking about them and you're thinking about what they're thinking about you. You do care what they think, but it's easier to lie than to try. You know, "I've always been this way." No, you haven't... "I'm fine." No, you're not. But sometimes it's just easier to lie than to try.

And when we don't try, we never become everything we could possibly be. And it doesn't just impact us; it impacts the people around us, it impacts the people we love, it impacts the people who are depending on us. It impacts the people who are trying to get close to us. Because as long as you're lying to yourself, there is an obstacle between you and the people who wanna be close to you. You are diminishing your own... Listen. You're diminishing your own capacity for intimacy. Because you can't have intimacy with someone who's dishonest with you or dishonest with themselves.

Now, in a professional environment, if you're a manager or an employer, or you run a franchise or you have a company... In a professional environment, when you discover that you have hired a liar you eventually fire the liar. You can't work with a liar. You just can't. And so if you have the capacity and you have the authority when you discover, "You know what this person is just a perpetual liar," you fire the liar.

So I wanna give you some secondary advice as we talk about advice in this series. I wanna challenge you and encourage you to fire the liar. I want you to fire the dishonest version of you and hire an honest version of you. An honest version that will tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself the truth, even if the truth makes you feel bad about yourself. Tell yourself the truth even if the truth makes you feel bad about yourself. Contrary to what culture is telling us constantly, there are worse things than feeling bad about yourself. There are worse things than feeling bad about yourself. Hanging on to what's bad about yourself is worse than feeling bad about yourself. And lying to ourselves enables us, as I said, empowers us to hang on to those things about us that we should let go and deal with. And refusing to acknowledge what's bad about ourselves is bad for ourselves, and it's bad for the people around us as well.

And then there's this. It gets worse. When... And again, if you've raised kids you've seen this. But we think, "Oh, those are middle school and high school students." No, this is just human beings. When we aren't honest about why we're doing what we're doing, when we're not honest with ourselves about why we're doing what we're doing, we have a difficult time taking responsibility for the outcome of our doing. This is so important. This, in some ways, explains part of what we see happening culturally in our country and in the world. When we lie to ourselves about why we're doing what we're doing, it is very difficult for us to take responsibility for the outcome of our doing, because it's not really our fault.

It's not really your fault. I mean, it wasn't... You're not even honest about why you did what you did so why would you be honest about whose responsibility it is as a result of what you did? And we have an adjective... We have an adjective for people who refuse to take responsibility for the outcome of their doing. We call those people irresponsible. Self-deception, eventually or immediately, self-deception always results in irresponsibility. And my irresponsibility eventually becomes somebody else's responsibility. And your irresponsibility eventually becomes somebody else's responsibility.

So come on. Just tell yourself. Tell yourself the truth. Just tell yourself the truth. It's terrifying. It's shaming. It's embarrassing. Come on. It's just you and you. It is just you and you. The only person that's gonna be embarrassed is you. The only person that's gonna feel the shame is you. The only person that's gonna feel bad about themselves is you.

And the moment you tell yourself the truth, and the moment you begin to act on what you discovered... This... Today is not about acting on it, that's up to you. I just wanna get you to the table. The moment you begin to behave on what you've discovered, the moment you begin to allow that truth to settle into your thinking, you become... You don't just become a better version of you. You become you. Jesus said... And we can all quote this. I mean, everybody knows this verse, "You shall know the truth," Jesus said. "And the truth shall set you free." And it's true. And telling yourself the truth sets us free, and telling ourselves the truth about why we do and why we don't is what sets us free to become who God created us to be. Because you can't become fully you and fully alive as long as you're hiding and you can't become fully you and fully alive as long as you're lying to yourself, out of sorts with yourself. So quit hiding.

Now, I know what a lot of us are thinking, okay? If I were sitting there, I know part of what I'd be thinking. I'd be thinking, "You know what? I sure hope... Is listening to this, right? I mean, I am so glad they are hearing this. I am so glad. AS, I assure you this is really good. Very compelling, very emotional, very, very good. Good presentation. Good event. Good. Yeah."

[laughter]

"So many people need to hear this. I hope all the self-deceivers kind of get their arms around this." And you know what? I do too. Including you. So here's what I'm gonna do. To be an equal opportunity offender, I'm gonna read a passage of Scripture that has a promise attached. And then I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. So the passage I'm gonna read is written by the Apostle Paul and the context of where he wrote this... Again, we can't... There's no way to explain this because we can't smell it and see it and fear it and taste it, but he's in Rome. He's in Nero's Rome. He's been arrested and he's waiting for his trial and he's waited a long time. And he's in Nero's Rome. Things don't go well for Christians in Nero's Rome. Things don't go well for Christian leaders in particular and influencers in Nero's Rome. And he's waiting. And he writes this letter to Christians. It became a letter that circulated all around. So within that context, he writes the following, okay? So are you ready for this? And let me just stop and say this, if you're not a Christian or you're not a Jesus follower, or you're not religious, or maybe you're part of another faith, or you used to have faith and you lost it, this is for you too. Okay?

The application isn't "Become a Christian." The invitation... It's an invitation more than an application. The invitation is to come out of hiding and to be honest with yourself. And the truth is... And I'm pushing on you a little bit, and I have no authority over you so I'm not telling you what to do, I'm not your pastor, but perhaps, just perhaps, part of the reason that you lost faith and that you resist faith has to do with what we're talking about. So, of course, your Heavenly Father who loves you would say, "Come on. Come on. Set the excuses aside just for a moment. Pull back the curtain and just be honest with yourself. Here's what Paul writes. It's so powerful. It sounds like a conclusion, but he's really introducing something. He writes this. He says, "And the peace of God... " The peace of God. Imagine if you had the peace of God. Imagine if God knows everything about everybody and you can have peace... It's the ability to have peace. Well, he describes it, "And the peace of God," which doesn't make any sense, "it transcends all understanding, will guard... " This is so amazing. "Will guard your heart," like a warrior, "guard your heart and guard your mind in Christ Jesus."

He says, "There is something that is available to you. The peace of God." The peace of God is... The world is going... Is upside down, my health is upside down, things are out of control, but I have peace because... I have the peace of God, and God knows all of this, and God isn't worried. The peace of God that guards your heart and guards your mind in Christ Jesus. We are like, "Yeah, I'd like to have some of that." And he says, "I'm gonna tell you how to get it." Here's what he says, "So if you want the peace of God that guards your heart in Christ Jesus, guards your mind, that transcends... " It doesn't make any sense, but there's peace in the midst of things that don't make sense. He says, "Here's what you do.""Whatever is true," whatever is true, just the true things, "whatever is noble," this is a word we don't use much, noble. Worthy of respect. Dignified. "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is dignified, whatever is right."

Whatever is the right thing. "Whatever is right. Whatever is pure." Pure means unmixed. No shades of gray. Just unmixed, undiluted, unmixed. "Whatever is pure." Then, "Whatever is lovely," meaning, whatever is pleasing, whatever is...

[vocalization]

All is well. "And whatever is admirable, commendable, respectable... " Look at that list a second. Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, he says, "Here's what I want you to do. You wanna experience the peace of God? Do you wanna experience the peace of God that will leave you at peace with yourself?" He says, "I want you to think about those things." This is a powerful statement. It's a mathematical term. He says, "I want you to measure your thoughts against that list. I want you to measure your... I want you to align your thoughts. I want you to think about and embrace what is true, what is noble, what is pure, what is undiluted, what is right, what is lovely, what is worth celebrating. I want you to embrace that and I want you to expel everything contrary to it." "Oh," he says. "And here's the promise. "And the God of peace will be with you."

Now, here's something interesting. We think, "Oh, God is with us all the time." True. Paul's talking about something else. He's saying, "Do you want to experience... " maybe even feel, but, "Do you want to experience the peace of God?" He says, "Then you have to expel and do away with all the diluted thoughts, all the impure, all the unrighteous and embrace what is absolutely true." And do you know what you get when you give yourself permission to tell yourself the truth about you? You get you. The real you. Not the hidden you, not the deluded you, not the untruthful you, not the lack of nobility you, not the love ____ or unlovely you. Because you will have peace with God, who is at peace with you. Which allows you to be who God created you to be.

Now, I'm about to ask you a series of questions. Most of them are irrelevant for you. But if one of them lights up your conscience you're gonna be tempted to lie. Not to me, you're gonna be tempted to lie to you. Because you already have a go-to answer for this question, because you've given the same answer over and over and over and over every time anyone else has asked you. So I want you to do yourself a favor in these next few moments and just tell yourself the truth. Okay. You ready? Here we go. First question, Why are you avoiding? Him, her, that conversation, that thing. You're just constantly... Or to ask you in a different way, Why are you putting that off? Why are you putting that off? Really? No, no, no, no. When she or he asked you about it, you got your... No, no, no, no. This is just you and you and your heavenly Father who already knows.

Why are you avoiding? Why are you putting that off? Why won't you get help? I mean, everybody who loves you thinks you need help, and you've got 25 reasons why you don't need help and... But come on, this is just you and you and your Heavenly Father who knows you need help. "I want you to get help." Why won't you to ask for help? Why won't you go see a counselor? Really. Now, I know it's expensive, but that... Come on. You do what you wanna do, you always do what you wanna do, you find a way when you wanna do it. Come on, just you and you and your heavenly Father who loves you. Why won't... Why won't you go get help and why won't you involve somebody else?

Ladies, why do you keep going out with him? He's not good for you, you know he's not good for you, your momma knows he's not good for you, your friends know, he knows he's... Everybody knows but you and you know, come on. And you've got... I know you got a reason. Of course, you have a reason, you're a rational person, you feel like you gotta have an answer when people ask, but come on. Why? Why do you keep going out with her? Really, why did you file for divorce? Not the go-to answer. Maybe it was 10 years ago and you're still giving the go-to answer. Have you ever truly acknowledged to yourself why you filed for divorce? Have you ever... It's terrifying because between you and you and God, it was a really bad reason, so of course you're not gonna share that. And you've put it so far in the back that you have begun to believe your own narrative, but come on. You wanna be free, you wanna be you? You want the barrier between you and whoever you wanna be intimate with to come down, have you... Really, why'd you file for divorce?

Why are you taking that job? Why are you quitting your job? This is next one. What's the real reason you don't call your kids? What's the real reason you don't call your mom? What's the real reason you don't call your dad, your brother or your sister? I know there was that thing at Christmas and that thing at Thanksgiving, and he was a terrible dad or she wasn't there for you. Yeah, yeah. When you tell your story, everybody's like, "Yeah, I wouldn't call them either," but have you been 100% honest with yourself about that, the real reason?" Why won't you tell her the truth about what's going on? "Oh, I don't wanna hurt her feelings... " Mm-mm. No. Why won't you tell her the truth about what's going on, the real reason? Why wont you tell him the truth about what's going on?

Why don't you go back and finish school? No, really, why won't you go back and finish school? Have you ever been... You don't have to go back and finish school, you don't have to do anything, but have you been honest with yourself about why you won't go back and finish? Then for all of us, what are you afraid of? "I'm not afraid of anything. Well, yeah, you just admitted what you're afraid of, you're afraid of admitting what you're afraid of. "I'm not afraid of anything... " Come on, what are you afraid of? And then maybe most relevant question of all. Why doesn't AS mind his own business?

[laughter]

Isn't this horrible, terrifying? I'm making this next thing up, okay? I just feel like God's sitting on the edge of the seat going, "Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, you can do it. Come on, come out of the hiding." Tell yourself the truth. Lies lose their power in the light. Lies lose their grip when exposed to the truth. So tell yourself the truth. You will be glad you did not initially, eventually, because you'll have peace with God, you'll have the God of peace, and you'll be at peace with yourself. And Jesus said, truth sets us free. In fact, Jesus said, you will be free indeed. So tell yourself the truth.